101 Taylor Swift Quotes To Inspire and Empower Us All

Taylor Swift is without a doubt one of the biggest superstars in history. Not only is she a creative powerhouse, she’s a brilliant businesswoman. Her record-breaking Eras tour was the highest-grossing tour of all time, generating over $2 billion in ticket sales and close to $5 billion in consumer spending in the United States alone. It’s no wonder people, especially kids, look up to and adore her. That’s why we’ve rounded up our favorite Taylor Swift quotes to inspire and motivate your students. There are so many great ways to incorporate these quotes into your lessons. Use them as prompts for journal entries, debate topics, or just as general life inspiration for your students.

Start by downloading and printing our Taylor Swift quote posters. They’re free to download—just enter your email address in the form on this page. Then check out all our favorite Taylor Swift quotes below.

(Note: These Taylor Swift quotes are all reliably sourced from online sources like Lib Quotes and Wikiquotes, magazines like Variety, Elle, and others, as well as the book Taylor Swift: In Her Own Words, edited by Helena Hunt, so you can share them with confidence!)

Jump to:

Taylor Swift Quotes About Having Fun

We’re just entertaining people, and it’s supposed to be fun.

I try to kind of implement as much spontaneity in my life as I possibly can, especially because, you know, this actually is really fun.

I don’t think it’s the most important thing in life to fit in. I think it’s the most important thing in life to dance to the beat of your own drum and to look like you’re having more fun than the people who look cool.

I feel like dancing is sort of a metaphor for the way you live your life. You know how you’re at a house party and there’s a group of people over there just talking and rolling their eyes at everyone dancing? And you know which group is having more fun.  

You have to not only live your life in spite of people who don’t understand you, you have to have more fun than they do.

Taylor Swift Quotes About Motivation and Believing in Yourself

Anytime someone tells me that I can’t do something, I want to do it more. 

I love having a goal, feeling like I’m on a mission. I love trying to beat what I’ve done so far. 

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average. 

There may be times when you put your whole heart and soul into something and it is met with cynicism or skepticism but you can’t let that crush you. You have to let that fuel you because we live in a world where anyone has the right to say anything they want about you at any time, but just please remember that you have the right to prove them wrong. 

If you’re being met with resistance, that probably means you’re doing something new. If you’re experiencing turbulence or pressure, that probably means you’re rising. 

I don’t have to do much to shock people.

Taylor Swift Quotes About the Power of Words

Words are everything to me. Words can build me up and make me feel so good. And on the flip side, words can absolutely demolish me. I am nowhere close to being bulletproof when it comes to criticism. 

Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together. I hope you use yours for good, because the only words you’ll regret more than the ones left unsaid are the ones you use to intentionally hurt someone.

Apologizing when you have hurt someone who really matters to you takes nothing away from you. … Learn how to make a sincere apology, and you can avoid breaking down the trust in your friendships and relationships.

Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important things are valuable. 

Taylor Swift Quotes About Being a Songwriter

I’ve always known that writing was the main pillar holding up my career. I’ve always known it was the main pillar of, kind of, my sanity as well.

I love writing songs because I love preserving memories, like putting a picture frame around a feeling you once had. 

Your feelings are so important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again. 

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works. 

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that. 

I’m so lucky that I get to write my own music and write my own stories, so every single time I look down in the audience and I see somebody singing the words back to me, it makes it all worth it. 

I think that the way music can transport you back to a long forgotten memory is the closest sensation we have to travelling back in time. 

All I think about are metaphors and cats.

For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that’s taking something that potentially should be celebrated—a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way—that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist. 

I love to write honest songs that name real people, then get up onstage and live out those emotions in front of 15,000 people. 

If something happens to me, you’re going to hear about it. I only know how to write songs about my life.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions. 

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

I feel like, as a songwriter, I can’t develop thick skin. I cannot put up protective walls, because it’s my job to feel everything.

Taylor Swift Quotes About Being Fearless

To me, fearless is not the absence of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts—lots of them. To me, fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death.

I overanalyze myself into being a big bag of worries. 

Bravery happens to different people in different ways. And I think that it can be as simple as saying what you mean. It can be as simple as being honest about who you are or who you love. And I think that, you know, it doesn’t have to be some courageous act when there’s a movie score in the background. I think bravery can happen in little tiny doses every day.

Obviously, anytime you’re standing up against or for anything, you’re never going to receive unanimous praise. But that’s what forces you to be brave. And that’s what’s different about the way I live my life now. 

You only have so much room in your life and so much energy to give to those in it. Be discerning. If someone in your life is hurting you, draining you, or causing you pain in a way that feels unresolvable, blocking their number isn’t cruel. It’s just a simple setting on your phone that will eliminate drama if you so choose to use it. 

Every day I try to remind myself of the good in the world, the love I’ve witnessed and the faith I have in humanity. We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears.

The thing about life is that every time you learn a new lesson, there’s just another one right around the corner.

Taylor Swift Quotes About Hard Work and Finding Success

A lot of the best things I ever did creatively were things that I had to really fight—and I mean aggressively fight—to have happen.

The bigger your career gets, the more you struggle with the idea that a lot of people see you the same way they see an iPhone or a Starbucks.

I was raised by two parents who raised me to never be presumptuous about success or winning, and they always would say you have to work for every single thing that you get. And so, every single time I’ve won an award or something like that, it’s been like I win it like it’s the last time I’ll ever win anything. 

I want to say to all the young women out there: There will be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame, but if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going you’ll look around and you’ll know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world.

You feel like you’re being completely pulled into a riptide. So what are you going to do? Splash a lot? Or hold your breath and hope you somehow resurface? And that’s what I did.

Creativity is getting inspiration and having that lightning bolt idea moment, and then having the hard work ethic to sit down at the desk and write it down.

You can be accidentally successful for three or four years. Accidents happen. But careers take hard work.

I really like to explore the edges of what I’m allowed to do. … If you don’t paint using different colors, you’re making the choice to stay the same. 

Taylor Swift Quotes About Love

I’m fascinated by love. … I love studying it and watching it. I love thinking about how we treat each other, and the crazy way that one person can feel one thing and another can feel totally different. 

No matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have to believe in love stories and Prince Charmings and happily ever after. That’s why I write these songs. Because I think love is fearless. 

When people need music the most is when they’re falling in love or falling out of it.

My experiences in love have taught me difficult lessons, especially my experiences with crazy love … the ones that went from zero to a hundred miles per hour and then hit a wall and exploded. And it was awful. And ridiculous. And desperate. And thrilling. And when the dust settled, it was something I’d never take back. 

I think I’m smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid. 

When you get your heart broken, or you lose someone from your life, or when you’re trying to recover from a breakup, it’s almost like the same kind of struggle that someone goes through trying to beat addiction. It’s not one habit you’re breaking—it’s every single minute of the day you’re breaking a habit. And it’s exhausting. 

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes—if one could choose a worst part—would possibly be if you get out of the relationship and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about yourself to make that person like you.

I want to be the girl who, like, when she falls in love, it’s like a big deal and it’s a rare thing. 

If love is worth it, if it’s that good that it’s worth fighting for, then you know that it’s the right love.

Taylor Swift Quotes About Self-Esteem and Self-Love

For too long, the projected opinions of strangers affected how I viewed my relationships. Whether it was the general internet consensus of who would be right for me, or what they thought was “couples goals” based on a picture I posted on Instagram. That stuff isn’t real. For an approval seeker like me, it was an important lesson for me to learn to have my own value system of what I actually want. 

I’m … thankful that when I go to sleep at night I get to know that I’ve been myself that day. And I’ve been myself all the days before that. 

Since I was 15 years old, if people criticized me for something, I changed it. So you realize you might be this amalgamation of criticisms that were hurled at you, and not an actual person who’s made any of these choices themselves. And so I decided I needed to live a quiet life, because a quiet personal life invites no discussion, dissection, and debate. 

I hope you know that who you are is who you choose to be, and that whispers behind your back don’t define you. You are the only one who gets to decide what you will be remembered for. 

Taylor Swift Quotes About Beauty

I learned to stop hating every ounce of fat on my body. I worked hard to retrain my brain that a little extra weight means curves, shinier hair, and more energy. I think a lot of us push the boundaries of dieting, but taking it too far can be really dangerous. There is no quick fix. I work on accepting my body every day.

The people who strike me as beautiful are the people who have their own thing going on. …Unique and different is the next generation of beautiful. You don’t have to be the same as everyone else. In fact, I don’t think you should. 

For me, beauty is sincerity. I think that there are so many different ways that someone can be beautiful.

Taylor Swift Quotes About Standing Up for Yourself

Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back. Be like a snake—only bite if someone steps on you. 

I still think it’s important to be polite, but not at all costs. Not when you’re being pushed beyond your limits, and not when people are walking all over you. I needed to get to a point where I was ready, able and willing to call out bull—t rather than just smiling my way through it. 

I needed to grow up in many ways. I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s. 

Taylor Swift Quotes About Taking the Good With the Bad

It’s weird, because in some of the worst times of my career, and reputation, dare I say, I had some of the most beautiful times—in my quiet life that I chose to have. And I had some of the most incredible memories with the friends I now knew cared about me, even if everyone hated me. —Rolling Stone

The bad stuff was really significant and damaging. But the good stuff will endure. The good lessons—you realize that you can’t just show your life to people. —Rolling Stone

There is a tendency to block out negative things because they really hurt. But if I stop feeling pain, then I’m afraid that I’ll stop feeling immense excitement and epic celebration and happiness, which, I can’t stop feeling those things. So, I feel everything. And I think it keeps me who I am.

If I could go back and tell myself one thing as a 13-year-old, I think I would go back and tell myself that everything that’s going to happen to me, even the bad things, are happening for a reason, and that I will actually learn more from the bad things that happened to me than I will the good things. 

I’ve come to a realization that I need to be able to forgive myself for making the wrong choice, trusting the wrong person, or figuratively falling on my face in front of everyone. Step into the daylight and let it go.

Despite our need to simplify and generalize absolutely everyone and everything in this life, humans are intrinsically impossible to simplify. We are never just good or just bad. We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves, our deepest secrets and our favorite stories to tell at a dinner party. 

You can’t believe too much of your positive hype, and you can’t believe too much of your negative press—you live somewhere in between. 

Taylor Swift Quotes About Making Connections

I live for the feeling of standing on a stage and saying, “I feel this way,” and the crowd responding with “We do too!” And me being like, “Really?” And they’re like, “Yes!”

I think you start to realize that as human beings, all we really want is a connection with someone else. And I think that music is that ultimate connection. 

It’s assumed that [women] hate each other. Even if we’re smiling and photographed together with our arms around each other, it’s assumed there’s a knife in our pocket. 

Your reputation is only real if it stops you from getting to know someone where you feel like you can connect with them in a really real way.

It’s so much easier to like people, and to let people in, to trust them until they prove that you should do otherwise. The alternative is being an iceberg. 

We live for these fleeting moments of happiness. Happiness is not a constant. It’s something that we only experience a glimpse of every once in a while, but it’s worth it. 

Taylor Swift Song Lyrics That Strike a Chord

Heartbreak is the national anthem. We sing it proudly. —New Romantics/1989

Flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful. —Snow on the Beach/Midnights

Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven. —Invisible String/Folklore

Uh oh, I’m falling in love. —Wonderland/1989

Too in love to think straight. —Wonderland/1989

Shade never made anybody less gay. —You Need To Calm Down/Lover

Once upon a time, the planets and the fates and all the stars aligned. —Mastermind/Midnights

I’m so in love that I might stop breathing. —Paris/Midnights

It’s you and me, that’s my whole world. —Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince/Lover

Running home to your sweet nothings. —Sweet Nothing/Midnights

Just want to stay in that lavender haze. —Lavender Haze/Midnights

The rest of the world was black and white, but we were in screaming color. —Out of the Woods/1989 

Your eyes look like coming home. —Everything Has Changed/Red

I feel so high school every time I look at you. —So High School/The Tortured Poets Department

Long story short, I survived. —Long Story Short/Evermore

One single thread of gold tied me to you. —Invisible String/Folklore

And all at once, you are the one I have been waiting for. —King of My Heart/Reputation

Spinning in my highest heels, love, shining just for you. —Mirrorball/Folklore

It’s been occurring to me I’d like to hang out with you for my whole life. —Stay Stay Stay/Red

Never be so kind you forget to be clever, never be so clever you forget to be kind. —Marjorie/Evermore

I’m the only one of me, baby, that’s the fun of me. —Me!/Lover

I struck a match and blew your mind.—Getaway Car/Reputation

Hold onto the memories, they will hold onto you. —New Year’s Day/Lover

The air was cold but something about it felt like home somehow. —All Too Well/Red

The autumn chill that wakes me up, you loved the amber skies so much. —Marjorie/Evermore

Pick your poison babe, I’m poison either way. —I’m Gonna Get You Back/The Tortured Poets Department

Get my free Taylor Swift quote posters!

Don’t forget to grab your free printable Taylor Swift quotes posters to hang in your classroom or school hallways!

If you loved these Taylor Swift quotes, be sure to check out our Inspirational Quotes by and for Women!

Plus, get all the latest teaching tips and ideas when you subscribe to our free newsletters!